PUBLIC LIVES; Lawyer Wins the Battle of His Client's Life

IN another time and another courthouse, the conviction of a defendant on four counts of first-degree murder, and the sentencing of that defendant to life in prison without parole, would be considered something of a loss for a defense lawyer.

But for William M. Tendy Jr., last month's jury verdict of life came as an enormous emotional relief, the lifting of a moral weight that had burdened and nearly broken him in the two years since he took on the case of Dalkeith McIntosh.

Conventional wisdom in Poughkeepsie had it that Mr. McIntosh, a 38-year-old black Jamaican immigrant, would be sentenced to death in the state's second capital murder trial since the death penalty was revived in 1995. Mr. McIntosh's life, however, was spared by an all-white jury in conservative, prosperous Dutchess County, a decision that contrasted sharply with a death sentence imposed on a former jail guard by a Brooklyn jury in June. Most of those who watched the trial say that Mr. Tendy was the main obstacle between Mr. McIntosh and a lethal injection.

''A lot of people here were surprised at the verdict, but not those of us who know Bill,'' said Jeffrey Martin, a Rhinebeck lawyer. ''To have defended a person like that takes enormous skills, which few people in this area possess. But Bill isn't a typical lawyer -- he basically transforms himself into the person he's representing. He's one of the best attorneys we've ever had around here.''

Mr. Tendy, 44, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney's office, is the son of the longtime No. 2 man in the United States Attorney's office in New York, a much-admired figure in the legal community who died in 1986. Since leaving the city in 1984, Mr. Tendy has successfully defended several high-profile murder suspects in the Hudson Valley, including Iris Pyne, who was acquitted last year of murdering her husband on grounds of self-defense.

But for most of the past two years, Mr. Tendy essentially jettisoned all other cases and most of his personal life -- he has custody of his two young children -- to keep Mr. McIntosh from death row. The task was made harder by the revulsion expressed throughout Dutchess County at the crime, which occurred in August 1996. Mr. McIntosh was accused of murdering his estranged wife and her 23-year-old daughter, and of shooting in the mouth a 6-year-old boy, left for dead, who lived to become the chief witness against him.

Mr. Tendy, like almost every other lawyer in the state, had no experience with capital murder cases, but several years earlier had attended a seminar led by the state's new Capital Defenders Office to prepare defense lawyers for such cases. Though he said he had no strong feelings about the death penalty, he was asked by the office to take on the McIntosh case because of his strong reputation as a defense lawyer, and he accepted it for reasons he now realizes were not fully formed.

''What attracted me was that this was such new ground and I wanted to be involved in it,'' he said a few days ago, sitting in his law office in a quiet building across from the Poughkeepsie Galleria. ''I had an opportunity to help shape an area of the law that was untouched. But after I got it, I realized how much more complicated it all was.''

BECAUSE the death penalty law is so new and has never had a formal challenge, Mr. Tendy had to file a lengthy series of motions to lay the groundwork for a later appeal on constitutional grounds had his client received the maximum sentence. Nearly 5,000 county residents had to fill out 45 pages of questions about execution, and the entire jury selection process took months. And then there were the facts of the case, which Mr. Tendy is still amazed did not lead to an acquittal. There was no physical evidence connecting Mr. McIntosh to the murders; the principal testimony against him came from the boy.

With only a few days to prepare for the sentencing phase, Mr. Tendy brought in Mr. McIntosh's siblings to testify that he had been abused as a child, and reminded the jury that his client was just a few I.Q. points above that of someone who is mentally retarded. In a religiously flavored hourlong summation, he urged them to choose life, citing Jesus as ''the most famous victim of capital punishment'' and one who would have urged mercy.

''After he lost in the guilt phase, he met the jury on their own moral ground in the penalty phase,'' said Kevin M. Doyle, the state's chief capital defender. ''He didn't start spouting elitist secular arguments against the death penalty. He drew on their own values, which he happened to share, on the appropriateness of mercy in this case.''

Mr. Tendy, who grew up in Flushing, Queens, originally moved upstate -- to the jeers of his friends -- for a less hectic life. For more than a year, with the assistance of a team from the Capital Defenders Office, he spent seven days and nights every week on the case, juggling baby sitters and asking neighbors to help with family duties. After becoming more emotionally invested in the case than he ever expected, he is now hoping to have that life back, with no plans to accept another capital case.

''It consumed my entire life,'' he said. ''You can never get it out of your head that if you don't do the right job, a person could lose their life. They could be executed. It's the most difficult thing I've ever done, by far.''